


history never repeats

by theclaravoyant



Category: Agent Carter (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Multi, spoilers for 2x07
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-17
Updated: 2016-02-17
Packaged: 2018-05-21 06:53:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6042220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theclaravoyant/pseuds/theclaravoyant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>...but sometimes it rhymes. - Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol 1:Legacy</p><p>When Anna is gravely injured, Jarvis relives the last time he thought he'd come this close to losing her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	history never repeats

It’s just past midnight. There’s barely any starlight and the moon is at a sliver. The air is tight in their chests, and it’s cold – so very, very cold – yet sweat runs rivers down their foreheads and their necks, into their collars.

“Straus.”

Anna shakes her head and corrects him, but really, she’s guessing too. 

“Strasse.”

“Strahz.”

“ _Stra_ -sse.”

“Relax, sweetness ‘n light.”

Cupping Anna’s hands, Jarvis turns with a stern expression toward the deep and confident tones of Mr Howard Stark. Stark smiles at both of them, with a swaggering gesture toward the plane he has acquired. It’s a little too large, Jarvis thinks, for such a mission, but his heart rejects any hint of ingratitude. It’s too much a-flutter with love and terror at the insanity they’re about to perform. 

“If this all goes to plan, we won’t be talking to any Krauts, I promise,” Stark continues. “And if it doesn’t go well…I still don’t think we’ll be talking.” 

Jarvis swallows hard. Chin up.

“When – uh, when will we be departing?” he inquires.

“Just as soon as you two have put your heads between your legs and kissed each other goodbye.” 

Stark smirks, and climbs up into the plane. Several expressions cross Jarvis’ face – confusion, offense, terror, anger, frustration – but they settle back into gentle concern when Anna squeezes his hand and looks up at him, a silent question in her features about what exactly is going on. Jarvis can hardly speak as it is, let alone explain the stranger who for some reason has offered to help them. He gestures for Anna to climb into the cargo hold, and climbs up after her. 

-

They’ve been flying for a few hours in silence – all but holding their breaths, as if the slightest whisper might somehow be heard over the roar of the engines. 

Jarvis is trying not to think about where they’re going, or how many towns or outposts or sentinels they must have passed. It helps that there are no instruments in front of him to determine direction or speed; he has only his intuition, which is inaccurate at this height and on this scale. Still, his mind refuses to become inactive. He tries thinking of Anna, but all that comes to mind is the fear on her face, and the tears she cried when her brother was shot, and the haunting expression she wore when her shop went up in flames.

Jarvis tries again to wipe his mind, letting the drone of the engines fill every fibre of his being. That’s when he hears them, outside, in the distance. 

He looks up. 

He regrets it immediately, as his eyes meet Anna’s, and he can’t blink in time to hide his fear.

“How’s that kissing going?”

Howard’s voice is the last thing they hear, before the back of the plane is all but ripped away. A wing snaps. Fire and smoke plume around them and they’re plummeting. Anna falls or crawls into his arms and she’s screaming so loud he can’t hear anything else.

-

“Excuse me, sir. Sir? We need to keep this hallway clear.”

A hand touches his elbow. The nurse. She smiles sweetly and leads him away. Where’s Ms Carter? What happened? He even feels a strangely overwhelming urge to speak to Howard.

He sits, instead, at the nurse’s insistence, and tries to listen to her explanation. At the end of it, she tells him his friend is by the phone, but he doesn’t check. The cold night air is still biting his skin. He can feel the pull of the cargo straps against his wrist as he holds onto it and to Anna for dear life. As it turns out, they’d landed over Russia. They were picked up, fed, clothed, and looked after. They were given a home.

Then their home was attacked. Her blood is on his hands and his heart won’t stop racing and he’d give anything to promise her one more time that they’re going to be okay. That he would always come back to her – and to think, she’d been the one worried about him. 

It’s no use berating himself, he knows that, but he can’t help it. He can’t help wondering. Perhaps he should have insisted Sousa stay with them. Or perhaps, if he’d allowed Howard to install that ridiculous security system like he’d wanted to, this never would have happened. Ifs, buts, and maybes. That’s all they are. But besides them, there is only falling through the sky, and listening to her scream, and watching the red blood plume out over the bright green of her shirt.

It’s at this moment Ms Carter slips into the seat beside him. By her face and her breath, the seeds of a new rage are already prickling at her, but they are muffled by the aura of grief and despair he must by this point be giving off. She keeps silent, unsure what to say. She’s unsure whether to take his hand. Unsure what will help, if anything.

“She’s still in surgery,” Jarvis explains haltingly. It’s all he picked up, really, and it feels like it’s not sinking in, at the same time as it feels like it’s drowning him. “They can’t even say if she’ll…”

He can’t say it. She can’t do it. She mustn’t. He doesn’t know what he’ll do if she does. He can already feel the colour draining from the world at the very thought.

Ms Carter – Peggy – bits her lip, and reaches for his hand. She’s still silent, still looking ahead. Still unsure. But she knows how it feels to lose the one that she loved; she knows how he must be feeling now, staring into that abyss. She knows he needs somebody. Somebody that she didn’t have. Somebody that he would have been, had he known her. 

Is he supposed to thank her? He doesn’t have the energy, but he is grateful. The grip of her hand is the only thing tethering him to this time and place. He’s too exhausted to cry, or to sleep, and there’s nothing he can _do_ even if he had the energy to do any more than breathe. There’s nothing but the wait and the silence, and the hopes and prayers that this time there’s not a fighter on their tails waiting to shoot them down.


End file.
